Does anyone have a little more information on building the brass conning tower for my otw type VII? The plans Mr Dimmock outlined in the sketch leave a lot to the imagination,anyway i thought it might be better to contact someone who has already built it.There is no substitute for experience,right. One last thing (today anyway) the top of the hull is not flat about the last 1/3rd of the stern drops by about 5/8-3/4" do all you experts out there who have this boat have approx the same thing? I hope it's normal cause i have quite a substantial amout of free flood in already.

Save yourself some time and get the fiberglass tower that Bob has for the Type VII. You will find all the detail on it that the brass tower has, at a fraction of the aggravation...unless you are really good at soldering large flat brass surfaces and bending curves into the top for the spray deflectors. Additionally all the small detail pieces for the housing covers and handles are all on the fiberglass version as well.

The drop you describe at the rear of the boat is correct...they weren't flat the whole length of the deck. (I'm sure there are some other folks out here that can tell you just how much a 1/32 scale type VII deck should drop.)

One of the biggest challenges to building a Type VII (or IX) U-boat is figuring out what the 'inside' of the conning tower looks like. There were so many variations, that it can sometimes be frustrating. It was by studying *lots* of photos that I was able to figure out how I was going to build the inside of my tower.

Unless you are looking to build a specific boat, it may be easier to find some photos of a completed model and base your tower inside details on that.

I'll be running my OTW Type VII tomorrow and plan on taking some photos for an SCR article that I am writing. Send me an e-mail and I'll reply back with some conning tower detail shots.

If you download the a photo the resolution will be much better than what's displayed on the site. I shrunk the photos in order to get all of them on the web page.

It took me several months to get the tower completed (working on weekends). My advice, do the brass tower if you have the patients and any skill with a mini-torch. A soldering iron will NOT work! In my opinion, the resin tower doesn't hold a candle to the finished brass end product. On my tower, all the internal and external structures are hand made from brass. The only resin pieces used was the attack periscope base and the Gyro housing in front of the tower which were supplied with the kit. I re-made all the other pieces from brass. The loop antennae is built on a door latch principle (slightly lift it up, rotate 90 degrees and it drops down into the metal housing). I just couldn't resist that final touch! Since the photos were taken, I have corrected the deck machine gun sholder pieces and removed the red color from the lower hull. U-boats built after the war started did not have that color on the lower hull. My U-boat was built to represent U-96 Das Boot which was commissioned on September 14, 1940.

So far, it's been almost a two year project and I haven't installed a WTC into the hull as of yet. I plan on using a Dave Merriman 3.5 dual motor WTC. I'm new to this hobby and didn't have any experience or spare parts, everything has to be got for the very first time. I don't have a completion date in mind, it's just an enjoyable hobby to me.

Don-Let me politely disagree with you on the fiberglass tower! Your boat is absolutely magnificent, but I don't think that the majority of us can do wonders with metal the way you can. I agree that the metal tower is awesome, but I think that many people would get frustrated attempting to finishing the brass tower. The fiberglass alternative still gives a great looking finished product. I guess it comes down to what people are comfortable working with, and your work shows that you and brass get along very well!regards,Sam

I used the brass top shape that comes with the kit, styrene plastic sheet for the walls, and a slice of wood dowel (or plastic rod, I don't remember) for the bulge on the side.

Side exhaust housings became top exhaust housings, and were done with styrene, putty, and fine screen. If you want the exhaust grates to exit the side of the tower, you would have to modify the fiberglass tower for the openings...they are covered in this version.

Thanks for all the help on this everyone I am still going to build the brass tower although, i think it will offer more detail because it just seems criminal not to use all the beautiful photo etched parts! What the heck, all it takes is time.P.S. thanks for the photos Jeff.

Sam - You are absolutely correct... The brass tower does require some skill and a lot of patients. However, I don't believe that I have any special skills... just determination. I have done electronic repair soldering, but I had never used a mini-torch before. There were many times when I had to re-do several pieces and I thought that I would never get it done.

Note: there was a slight difference between the left and right tower photoetched sides. Also, After the tower is completely assembled it is about 1/16 to 3/32 too short for the opening in the deck plates.

Antoinel - I re-did almost everything in brass. The loop antennae was too fragile in the white metal form for my purposes. I wanted to manually rotate it 90 degrees and drop in down into the tower housing. I made the stacks and the outstde grilling from brass plate as well.